If you have more than one child, you have probably experienced your share of sibling disagreements. They may seem minor enough now, but the sibling relationship can become so battered, it eventually dissolves. Siblings are going to disagree. How you help them handle their conflicts is critical.
Perhaps even more important is teaching them how to apologize to each other properly for offenses. Apologies are meant to begin repairing relationships, but most apologies do more harm to the relationship than good. If you’ve ever had someone do something hateful towards you and then apologize with, “I’m sorry if I did anything to hurt your feelings,” you understand the problem.
One of the best things about the holidays is that your kids get time off from school and many of their activities. Bed times can be a bit later, because they can sleep in a little longer. You have more time at home together.
Entitlement. It’s a word that gets used a lot lately. As in “you parents are raising a bunch of entitled kids – it’s ruining our world”. While our culture is pushing that message, it’s also telling us how awful it is that “mothers are told to sacrifice their desires to be a good mom” or “tell your kids to be ‘who they are’ and go for ‘what they want'”. Talk about mixed messages!
We have recently been in one of those lovely spells where we are having constant car troubles. Did I mention it was with both of our cars? It’s never fun, but our experiences reminded me of something important.
In Top Tips for Teaching Kids About Empathy, we shared some basic tips for teaching empathy. To really raise empathetic kids though, they need a lot of practice seeing the world in different ways. (This is in no way an attempt to water down God’s Truths, rather to understand relationship dynamics caused by different points of view.) Fortunately, there are a lot of fun things you can do to help your kids begin to develop an empathetic heart.